


how to say i love you with chopsticks

by ksuzu



Category: Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types
Genre: Angst?, F/M, Gen, Subtle Humor, crackish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 00:15:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8919073
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ksuzu/pseuds/ksuzu
Summary: In which Haruhi fishes out a potato, and Tamaki-sempai's heart is torn asunder. Tamaki requested the following title: how good parents should behave





	

**Author's Note:**

> Tamaki is bizarre and sweet, and this is why Ouran is actually spectacular.

Tamaki ponders the vegetables and other goodies (but mostly vegetables, he believes) swirling under the top of the dark foamy broth as he would ponder choco stars, commoner’s ramen, and the latest instant coffee collection from Nestea—that is, he ponders these things with a sense of ruefulness and careful consideration.

He has a good deal of mixed feelings ( _very_ mixed) about the endeavor of yami-nabe, almost as mixed as the contents of the pot and almost as mixed _up_ as the variety of ingredients hailing from both richy-rich and poverty-striken locales.

Haruhi has told him to ‘Behave, _please_ , sempai’, so he will try to do so… but oh so carefully, as to not attract attention, he stirs up the pot a bit more when reaching in which his chopsticks, feeling around, tentatively avoiding the pricy Satsuma chicken and the delicious extra large shitake mushrooms.

Instead, he fishes out a trailing leaf of cabbage, white and long and (after putting it in his mouth) decidedly soggy-tasting.

(He tells her it’s delicious. Banzai the cabbage of the commoners. Prized at only 400 yen a bushel!)

Kyoya goes next, dipping his first pair of chopsticks into the stewing dark broth. He has the air of a surgeon, deftly extracting the flavorful centerpiece of the broth without unnecessary dilly-dally. It’s the giant taro root that Mori brought over. The taro has been made plump and flavorful from the time spent soaking in the pot. Kyoya deposits it on his plate, sets aside his first pair of chopsticks for his second, personal-use pair and takes a small bite, out of politeness.

Inside, Tamaki breathes a sigh of relief that Kyoya did not fish out the Hokkaido-raised beef he brought. The taro is expensive, no doubt, and specialty of the region the Morinozuka’s had inhabited for generations—but Tamaki imagines that meat was more rare in Haruhi’s frugal diet.

It's Kaoru’s turn now, and then it would be Haruhi’s. She is wedged directly in between the unscrupulous twins, and the whole party is gathered around a medium-sized kotatsu table in Haruhi’s small (but cute) apartment.

“Oi, Hikaru…” Kaoru fishes out the jumbo Alaskan tiger shrimp, and proceeds to wave it at his twin. “I know you’ve been wanting this for a while, so I brought it to yami-nabe. Here.”

Hikaru, after commending his twin in the style of brotherly love, accepts the shrimp. Tamaki watches with a mixture of heartache and acute agitation as the shrimp passes over Haruhi’s plate and lands on Hikaru’s with a heavy ‘plop’.

Well… at least it's his cute daughter’s turn now! The pot still has a 1/3 balance of rich/poor ingredients. Odds not _entirely_ bad.

“Kao-chan gave his to Hika-chan, so he should go again!” a clear, sweet voice pipes in.

Tamaki stares at the speaker of the innocent but oh-so-offending sentence. Hunny blinks back, with adorable trademark flowers popping up out of literally nowhere.

Kaoru shrugs. “Sure. Though I’ve already tried everything we have in here before.

Tamaki twitches.

“H-Hunny-sempai! Why doesn’t Hikaru just give his piece of food to Kaoru when it’s his turn? That sounds like a better idea, yes?” Tamaki tries.

But Kaoru has already dipped his chopsticks into the pot again. This time, he pulls out a lean strip of Hokkaido-100% grass-fed beef. Upon seeing it, many people in the table give an “oooohhhh” in appreciation of his good fortune. (Not because they can't eat such a thing on a normal basis, but because everyone knows it was the best ingredient stewing in the dark broth.)

Kaoru eats it with great pomp and circumstance, just to liven the occasion. Tamaki does not notice. Tamaki’s attention is fixated on how Haruhi’s face looked truly impressed when she saw the beef and then… was that… for a second… oh no, was that… d-d-disappointment?

Darn the twins and their unsightly behavior! How could they eat such expensive food with such _great relish_ when Haruhi has never tried it before in her life!? His poor daughter, likely malnourished and so thin and slight due to a subsistence diet of rice and commoners’ vegetables!

Haruhi comes next, and Tamaki snaps out of his extended internal soliloquy to watch, breath held, as she sticks her chopsticks into the pot and fishes out a piece of potato.

Commoner’s potato.

Tamaki’s heart nearly tears asunder.

 


End file.
